I Can't Bring Myself To Say This Is The End (3/3)
Part One
Part Two
I thought I was going to drive myself crazy before I finished this chapter, and hopefully it makes sense because I’ve lost track of how many times it’s been edited.
Hope you all enjoy xx
Word Count/Rating: 2,411words/T
((XX))
“Nooo…Nooaah…” Rachel moaned out, struggling to form words as he pushed her further up the bar wall as he focused on the spot of flesh between her neck and shoulder. “Not…Not here…” She struggled to find a grip against the wall as she melted underneath Puck.
Moving from her collarbone, he rested his forehead against hers, breathing heavily as he thought. Without a word, he grabbed hold of her hand, dragging her towards the doors.
Why had Rachel let herself believe that after the bar; where Noah had made it explicitly clear that he loved her, and that he would be the only one to ever love her like she needed, while delivering bruising kisses to her lips, neck & collarbone, that she would wake up to next to him in bed?
That she would wake up next to him in bed, and the last day would just be this horrendous nightmare that would be pushed back to the furthest corner of their memories?
Because she was still the same overly optimistic person she’d been in high school, the same person who always believed that everything would turn out her way; and she read too many romantic novels in her free times at auditions and the diner.
Rachel stumbled backwards, the back of her knees hitting the side of the bed before she fell backwards on it. Reaching up, needing the contact she had earlier, she tugged on his shirt; swiftly pulling it up and over his head.
“It’s…it’s always been you Noah,” Rachel breathed into his skin. “I love you, and I don’t want you to leave.”
“Love you too.” He groaned out, fisting her hair in his hands as he captured her lips again.
She had woken up in the morning, with the barest of headaches, in the childhood bedroom of Noah Puckerman, with the man in question notably absent. Remembering the night before, she threw on the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, and stumbled downstairs in search of coffee and hopefully her fiancé.
“Noah left an hour ago,” Bec apologised as Rachel came in the kitchen, her hazel eyes full of hope. She handed over the coffee she’d just brewed. “He…he also said that you had to go back home.” It pained the teenager to deliver that message to the girl she had long considered a sister.
“Did…did he say anything else?” Did she still have a wedding to plan? Did she have to find a new apartment to live in? Would he be coming home anytime soon? She hated the thought of having to return to their apartment alone.
Bec shook her head again, feeling sympathy for the broken look on Rachel’s face. It was clear she had stuffed up, in the worst way possible; but she was trying desperately to fix it.
“When…when he comes back, can you tell him that I love him and that he needs to come home so we can work this out?” One way or another.
“Of course.”
#
Too coward to face nine years of memories alone straight away, Rachel vetoed heading back to the apartment in favour of her favourite coffee shop, and while she was waiting for her latte, she messaged Santana to come and meet her.
“You did what?” The Latina girl hissed, an unbelieving smirk crossing her face as she watched her friend bury her head in her hands.
Santana Lopez and Rachel Berry hadn’t always been friends; Rachel couldn’t always hide her insecurities and when her boyfriend had such a close friendship with the girl he used to fuck on a regular basis, she had trouble accepting that it was now a completely platonic friendship.
Then they all ended up in New York City, and the two girls stated spending more and more time together. Now she couldn’t think of who else she would be able to talk to.
“I know,” Rachel groaned.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Rach.”
“I know.”
They sat there in silence for a couple more minutes, Rachel’s face buried deep in her hands.
“Seriously Rachel? St. James? The same idiot from Vocal Adrenaline, who egged you? What the fuck possessed you?” She could deal with the idea that Rachel kissed someone else, she’d done it herself so couldn’t lay blame; it was also smugly satisfying knowing the diva wasn’t the image of perfection. She was just having difficulty with the idea that it was Jesse St. James.
“Stop reminding me,” Rachel cried out again. Santana smirked.
Santana left after the last of their coffee’s had been drained, telling her friend to just go home. Noah would be back sooner or later.
#
Unlocking the front door, she tried to block out the last time she had walked through the door. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t bother her as much as it did noticing the stray pair of Noah’s boots lying by the front door.
As she moved into the bedroom, where his dirty clothes lay mixed in with hers in the laundry hamper and where his smell still lingered on the bed sheets, she collapsed against the mattress, pulling his pillow over her face.
None of this was okay, and if she couldn’t fix the situation, she was never going to be able to forgive herself.
#
Puck apparently enjoyed torturing himself, he realised, as he wound up at the bleachers at McKinley High; his fingers gripped tightly around the neck of his beer bottle.
He didn’t want to think what had happened the night before had been a mistake; even though he had no intention of speaking to Rachel after he kicked her out of his house. He had just needed space to process everything.
Then she had passed him, her vanilla scent breaking through the stale smell of the bar; and it had engulfed him and all he could think about was her soft skin underneath his calloused hands, her sweet voice moaning his name in ecstasy. It hadn’t taken much to get him to react.
Sending her away was the best thing to do, he reassured himself; taking a swig of his beer as he sat down. He was still too angry to think rationally, and he wasn’t about to do anything that he was going to quickly regret.
#
Four weeks. It had been four weeks since Rachel left Noah’s bed. A month since he told her to go home. A month since she screwed her entire life in a matter of fifteen seconds that she’s regretted every single second since then.
She thinks it’s been the longest month in history, and at this point she’d do anything for a simple text message.
Every call to his cell phone went directly to voicemail. Every call to the Puckerman house in answered with a soft soon, Rachel; every call to every single Ohio friend is answered with a resounding he’s not here.
Her engagement ring is still on her finger, Noah’s favourite beer is still stocked in the fridge; and all of his recently washed laundry has been ironed, folded and carefully put away.
To an outsider, it looks like he’s going to walk through the door at any second.
Santana calls her stubborn, and she tries to keep silent on her fears that her friend is going into denial.
The two of them are relaxing at the coffee shop, when two girls their age sit down next to them, giggling over a wedding magazine. Rachel breaks down again. She can’t live in this limbo world anymore. She needs her fiancé back, or she needs to know that she has to somehow start her life over again.
#
A month. It’s the longest Puck’s gone without seeing/talking to Rachel since they finally got their act together back in high school.
They fight all the time, but normally he goes and gets drunk, before collapsing on the couch. They fight, she’ll throw his things at him and he’ll make some obscene remarks before they ended up in bed again.
Even their worst fight before this had just ended with him getting drunk.
He didn’t want to ignore her anymore. He didn’t want to be hiding away in his childhood bedroom in the middle of Ohio.
Puck wouldn’t admit this openly, but since he got serious with Rachel; for the first time in his life he began imagining his future. He wanted the children and the home that Rachel talked about. He wanted Rachel Berry to become Rachel Puckerman. He wanted the picture he’d painted in his head; he still wanted that picture.
That she’d let him paint.
He wanted to hate her for what she did. He thought he would never want to see her again after that type of betrayal.
But he doesn’t.
It’s her smile and its infectious laugh, and the way her eyes light up when she gets excited over something; even if it’s trivial. It’s the way that she can talk forever and hold a conversation, even though he tuned her out half an hour ago.
It’s the way that she can still go into an audition with the optimism that this time she’ll land a part, even after six years of constant disappointment.
He’s tried to, he tried to hate his fiancée for kissing another man, an ex-boyfriend, Jesse St. James; but that image that used to be burned into the back of his eyelids, waiting for him every time he closed his eyes has been replaced by Rachel spread out on their couch, wearing one of his old shirts, giggling hysterically and squirming underneath him while he tickled her.
Because everyone knows 95% of tickle wars end with sex. (Which he’d pointed out to Santana when she announced him whipped after Rachel accidentally let the story slip.)
He doesn’t want to be hiding in his childhood bedroom in Ohio. He wants to be back in New York City with Rachel curled up next to him.
Because despite everything, he still loves her.
#
Abigail Puckerman literally started sobbing when her son emerged from his locked bedroom; duffel bag slung over his shoulder and asked for a lift to the airport.
“Rachel is a good girl, Noah.” She reminds him as she pulls up to the drop off zone outside departures.
“I know.” He grumbles, because he’s listened to the woman ramble on about him and Rachel and second chances the entire ride. “I’ll talk to you later, ma.” He jumped out the car as it slowly came to a stop.
#
Rachel’s stuck at the diner on the afternoon shift, and the place is almost deserted now that the lunch rush has died away; and she’s absent-mindedly flipping through the newspaper.
“Rachel Berry.” The voice she hears isn’t a voice she wants to hear, and her hazel eyes narrow as she looks up.
“What are you doing here, Jesse?” She grumbles. “I don’t really want to see you. I never want to see you again.”
He tsk-ed, laughing lightly, as if it were a joke. “Now that’s not nice. I come here bringing you good news and you just throw me away like nothing’s happened.”
“Go away Jesse,” Rachel sighed tiredly. “I don’t want to know your news; I just want you to leave.”
He laughed again. “I got you an audition,” he announced it like it would change anything.
She supressed the urge to do an eye-roll, barely. “I don’t need your help to get auditions. I get them all the time.”
“A private audition, it will just be you and the director.”
Rachel paused, lost for words for a minute. “I…I can’t do that.” She managed to get out. “I can’t accept that.”
“Why not Rachel? You were the one always talking about your future as Broadway. I’m offering that to you…”
Because, Rachel knew that if she accepted his offer; she might as well have screwed her way into getting the job, and she’d be in his debt.
Rachel shook her head again, set on refusing his job. If she was going to make it on Broadway, she was going to make it without the assistance of Jesse St. James.
“Jesse, I need you to leave.”
He didn’t move, but he continued to stare at her, like she was a difficult puzzle that he needed to figure out.
“You’re screwing up my life Jesse.”
“You’ve changed Rachel. You used to be career-driven, you used to be ambitious. The old you would have jumped at the chance of a private audition for Broadway.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed again, and she regarded him harshly; seriously considering just throwing him out herself.
“I have not changed.” She hissed at him. “When I get a job on Broadway, it’s going to be because I was talented and the best choice. It’s not going to be because I made a horrible mistake by kissing their star and I’m not going to lose my fiancé because of it. I need you to leave.”
“Rachel…”
“I believe she told you to leave.” Rachel jumped at the new voice in the conversation, looking up.
“Noah…” She breathed out, excited he’d come back, relieved he was here.
Jesse stood up, recognising the growl in Puck’s voice. He didn’t want to risk getting into a fist fight with Noah Puckerman; he couldn’t go on stage every night if his ribs were cracked and his face black and blue.
“Just think about it Rachel, the offer isn’t going to last long.” But he couldn’t help get in the parting remark before he disappeared out the door.
As Rachel stood there silently, behind the counter, staring up at Noah; she was aware of the other waitress on the shift, sitting at the other end of the counter, enjoying the scene playing out in front of her.
“Hi,” Rachel smiled softly. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, despite all the times she’d imagined his return in the last month. He quirked an eyebrow. “You came back.”
Puck nodded.
“For good?”
“C’mere.”
She didn’t need any encouragement after that, she ran straight around the counter, wrapping her arms around him tightly.
“I’m sorry.”
Two muscled arms wrapped tightly around her petite frame, and he bent his head down to kiss her cheek softly.
“You’re something, Rach; couldn’t keep away from you.”
“We’re going to be okay, right?” Rachel murmured; her face buried deep in his chest.
“We’ll work it out.” He promised; his head nuzzled in her hair. “It’ll work out.”
((XX))